The Verykoukis Amendment

I want my Congressional representatives to get busy. Sure, they’ve got their hands full with health reform, saving the economy, and – I hope – job creation measures, but I want them to stand up for me and my right to choose. Specifically, I want to choose to deny them the use of my money for murder. That’s right, I don’t want a single cent of my money used to kill another person. Not a single Iraqi, Afghani, or convicted felon. I want the federal government to use my money to support members of the armed forces and their families. I want them to use it to operate penitentiaries for federal criminals. I want them to use my money for intelligence gathering in foreign lands. But I don’t want them to use it for any killing whatsoever.

I can’t see why this is a problem. Other people take the uninformed view that abortion is murder – though it is not – and Congress falls all over itself coddling their ignorance. Why not mine? Isn’t it valid, if fatuously simplistic, to call taking the lives of human beings, whether during war or in prison, murder? Why does the government get to use my money for their killing? Yes, I know, we have systems in place for declaring war and condemning people to death, but surely those systems are more fallible than a woman making a decision in consultation with her doctor. The war in Iraq proves that, right?

To make matters more egregious, a lot of this whinging about keepin’ the gubmint out of our health care (especially our Medicare!) comes from the same people who think they have every right to get involved in my health care. They think they should be able to tell me when and where I can get the care I may need, who can and can’t pay for it, and, sometimes, under what circumstances I can have it at all. Does that seem fair? If the Stupak amendment becomes law, they’ll be able to tell me that even if I’m buying insurance with my own money, I can’t get certain kinds of care. How is that right? It’s not. And, so, I want my piece of this absurd pie. I want Congress to tease out my share of the taxes they use for each person who is killed by military action and/or the death penalty. I want them to set that bit aside and use for something else. Something like, I don’t know, getting women whatever care[1] they and their doctors decide they need. Is that too much to ask?